In virtually every business sector there exists the need for individuals to provide others with business-related information. Such information can include rudimentary information (e.g., the person's name, business address, and other contact information), as well as information relating to a company's products and services. Over time, various practices for the distribution and utilization of such information have become standardized throughout the business community. Traditionally, these practices have included such things as the use of business cards to provide a simple means of distributing contact information, the use of manual rolodexes for the orderly storage and access to that contact information, and the use of printed brochures and technical data sheets to provide information about a company's products or services.
More recently, computers have been used in the distribution and management of such business information. Information is now commonly distributed by facsimile transmission and over the Internet via email and the World Wide Web and, to a lesser degree, over private extranets. This information is now commonly stored and managed by a computer, using special purpose programs such as an electronic rolodex or address book to manage the information.
Computer diskettes such as floppy disks were originally developed to store computer readable information, such as program code and data, and to permit the simple transfer of that information between different computers. The first widely used floppy disks were approximately 8 inches square. Thereafter, 51/4 inch disks became widely used and today, the most commonly used floppy disks are 31/2 inches square and store approximately 1.44 Megabytes of information. While these diskettes can and have been used to distribute all the various types of business information, their use for this purpose has not gained widespread acceptance. This has been due in part to the physical size of the diskettes and in part to the fact that computers are not universally present in all businesses and are not always compatible with one another. However, as the physical size of the diskettes has shrunk to the point where they can be easily mailed and transported and as the number of compatible computers increases, the use of diskettes to distribute certain types of business information has increased. For example, diskettes are now commonly used in direct mail advertising to provide demonstrations of software and to provide access to various on-line computer services.
Notwithstanding these advances, other types of business information are still distributed primarily in printed form. For example, business cards remain the primary vehicle for distribution of contact information. While prevalent, this means of distributing information has several disadvantages. First, the amount of basic information that must be shared is often more than is desired or capable of fitting on a business card. Whereas individuals have traditionally communicated via the post office mail or by voice telephone, they now have a variety of additional methods by which they can communicate, including by cell phone, fax, pager, email, and via a website. Second, since many people now manage this contact information with a computer, information received in printed form must be manually entered into the computer, thereby wasting time and human resources. There is also a risk of error in the manual entry of the information, a problem which is exacerbated by the fact that even a single erroneous alphanumeric character can render a piece of contact information useless. Third, additional business information, such as data and software required to access on-line computer services, cannot be included with the information contained on the business card.
One technique for the distribution of computer readable contact information is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,618, issued Sep. 27, 1988 to A. Raviv. The method and apparatus disclosed therein involves storing data on a magnetic strip that can be attached to a business card and thereafter removed by a recipient of the business card. The magnetic strip is then placed onto a floppy diskette that can then be inserted into a computer's floppy drive. The floppy diskette can include a jacket and a plastic carrier disk rotatably mounted to the jacket. The magnetic strip is attached to the plastic carrier and, when the diskette is placed into the disk drive the magnetic strip is rotated with the plastic carrier past the disk drive's read/write head. This techniques suffers from a number of disadvantages. Since the plastic carrier disk itself has no magnetic media, any file allocation table or other formatting information must be stored on the small magnetic strip itself, thereby limiting the amount of information that can be stored on the magnetic strip. Also, when being adhered to the plastic disk, the magnetic strip must be accurately aligned so that the tracks on the strip are concentric with the axis about which the plastic carrier rotates.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a system of distributing contact and other such business information in a manner that can achieve widespread use by being compact and by simplifying the electronic access to and storage of such information.